Open letter to BlackBerry bosses: Senior RIM exec tells all as company crumbles around him

There’s no question Research In Motion is in the midst of a major transitional period. The company is planning to launch a brand new product line based on a brand new operating system within the next 12 months, and even though the first device born out of RIM’s new QNX OS was impressive in some ways, it was incomplete. There still is a chance for RIM to deliver some really interesting competitive products, but time is quickly running out, as we have written time and time again. The thing is, RIM has always been a company controlled by two people — Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis. For all the things that have worked, they have missed the boat countless times and we’re now seeing the results.

We have received an open letter to Mike and Jim from a high-level RIM employee (whose identity we have verified), and in an amazingly honest and passionate plea, this letter gives fascinating insights into what RIM must fix, and fast. RIM did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Read the open letter in its entirety after the break.

P.S. If you’re an employee of RIM and want to send us your thoughts and feelings on the company, you can send them to us via email or leave a comment below.

UPDATE: Following this post, RIM issued an official response to the letter below. The company’s full response can be viewed here.

UPDATE 2: BGR has exclusively published two additional letters from RIM employees. They can both be viewed here.

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To the RIM Senior Management Team:

I have lost confidence.

While I hide it at work, my passion has been sapped. I know I am not alone — the sentiment is widespread and it includes people within your own teams.

Mike and Jim, please take the time to really absorb and digest the content of this letter because it reflects the feeling across a huge percentage of your employee base. You have many smart employees, many that have great ideas for the future, but unfortunately the culture at RIM does not allow us to speak openly without having to worry about the career-limiting effects.

Before I get into the meat of the matter, I will say I am not part of a large group of bitter employees wishing to embarrass us. Rather, I believe these points need to be heard and I desperately want RIM to regain its position as a successful industry leader. Our carriers, distributors, alliance partners, enterprise customers, and our loyal end users all want the same thing… for BlackBerry to once again be leading the pack.

We are in the middle of major “transition” and things have never been more chaotic. Almost every project is falling further and further behind schedule at a time when we absolutely must deliver great, solid products on time. We urge you to make bold decisions about our organisational structure, about our culture and most importantly our products.

While we anxiously wait to see the details of the streamlining plan, here are some suggestions:

1) Focus on the End User experience

Let’s obsess about what is best for the end user. We often make product decisions based on strategic alignment, partner requests or even legal advice — the end user doesn’t care. We simply have to admit that Apple is nailing this and it is one of the reasons they have people lining up overnight at stores around the world, and products sold out for months. These people aren’t hypnotized zombies, they simply love beautifully designed products that are user centric and work how they are supposed to work. Android has a major weakness — it will always lack the simplicity and elegance that comes with end-to-end device software, middleware and hardware control. We really have a great opportunity to build something new and “uniquely BlackBerry” with the QNX platform.

Let’s start an internal innovation revival with teams focused on what users will love instead of chasing “feature parity” and feature differentiation for no good reason (Adobe Flash being a major example). When was the last time we pushed out a significant new experience or feature that wasn’t already on other platforms?

Rather than constantly mocking iPhone and Android, we should encourage key decision makers across the board to use these products as their primary device for a week or so at a time — yes, on Exchange! This way we can understand why our users are switching and get inspiration as to how we can build our next-gen products even better! It’s incomprehensible that our top software engineers and executives aren’t using or deeply familiar with our competitor’s products.

2) Recruit Senior SW Leaders & enable decision-making

I’m going to say what everyone is thinking… We need some heavy hitters at RIM when it comes to software management. Teams still aren’t talking together properly, no one is making or can make critical decisions, all the while everyone is working crazy hours and still far behind. We are demotivated. Just look at who our major competitors are: Apple, Google & Microsoft. These are three of the biggest and most talented software companies on the planet. Then take a look at our software leadership teams in terms of what they have delivered and their past experience prior to RIM… It says everything.

3) Cut projects to the bone.

There is a serious need to consolidate our focus to just a handful of projects. Period.

We need to be disciplined here. We can’t afford any more initiatives based on carrier requests to squeeze out slightly more volume. Again, back to point #1, focus on the end users. They are the ones making both consumer & enterprise purchase decisions.

Strategy is often in the things you decide not to do.

On that note, we simply must stop shipping incomplete products that aren’t ready for the end user. It is hurting our brand tremendously. It takes guts to not allow a product to launch that may be 90% ready with a quarter end in sight, but it will pay off in the long term.

Look at Apple in 1997 for tips here. I really want you to watch this video because it has never been more relevant. It is our friend Steve Jobs in 97 and it may as well be you speaking to RIM employees and partners today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LEXae1j6EY

4) Developers, not Carriers can now make or break us

We urgently need to invest like we never have before in becoming developer friendly. The return will be worth every cent. There is no polite way to say this, but it’s true — BlackBerry smartphone apps suck. Even PlayBook, with all its glorious power, looks like a Fisher Price toy with its Adobe AIR/Flash apps.

Developing for BlackBerry is painful, and despite what you’ve been told, things haven’t really changed that much since Jamie Murai’s letter. Our SDK / development platform is like a rundown 1990’s Ford Explorer. Then there’s Apple, which has a shiny new BMW M3… just such a pleasure to drive. Developers want and need quality tools.

If we create great tools, we will see great work. Offer shit tools and we shouldn’t be surprised when we see shit apps.

The truth is, no one in RIM dares to tell management how bad our tools still are. Even our closest dev partners do their best to say it politely, but they will never bite the hand that feeds them. The solution? Recruit serious talent, buy SDK/API specialist companies, throw a truckload of money at it… Let’s do whatever it takes, and quickly!

5) Need for serious marketing punch to create end user desire

25 million iPad users don’t care that it doesn’t have Flash or true multitasking, so why make that a focus in our campaigns? I’ll answer that for you: it’s because that’s all that differentiates our products and its lazy marketing. I’ve never seen someone buy product B because it has something product A doesn’t have. People buy product B because they want and lust after product B.

Also an important note regarding our marketing: a product’s technical superiority does not equal desire, and therefore sales… How many Linux laptops are getting sold? How did Betamax go? My mother wants an iPad and iPhone because it is simple and appeals to her. Powerful multitasking doesn’t.

BlackBerry Messenger has been our standout, yet we wasted our marketing on strange stories from a barber shop to a horse wrangler. I promise you, this did nothing to help us in the mind of the average consumer.

We need an inventive and engaging campaign that focuses on what we are about. People buy into a brand / product not just because of features, but because of what it stands for and what it delivers to them. People don’t buy “what you do,” people buy “why you do it.” Take 3 minutes to watch the this video starting from the 2min mark: http://youtu.be/qp0HIF3SfI4

6) No Accountability – Canadians are too nice

RIM has a lot of people who underperform but still stay in their roles. No one is accountable. Where is the guy responsible for the 9530 software? Still with us, still running some important software initiative. We will never achieve excellence with this culture. Just because someone may have been a loyal RIM employee for 7 years, it doesn’t mean they are the best Manager / Director / VP for that role. It’s time to change the culture to deliver or move on and get out. We have far too many people in critical roles that fit this description. I can hear the cheers of my fellow employees now.

7) The press and analysts are pissing you off. Don’t snap. Now is the time for humility with a dash of paranoia.

The public’s questions about dual-CEOs are warranted. The partnership is not broken, but on the ground level, it is not efficient. Maybe we need our Eric Schmidt reign period.

Yes, four years ago we beat Microsoft when everyone said Windows Mobile with Direct Push in Exchange would kill us. It didn’t… in fact we grew stronger.

However, overconfidence clouds good decision-making. We missed not boldly reacting to the threat of iPhone when we saw it in January over four years ago. We laughed and said they are trying to put a computer on a phone, that it won’t work. We should have made the QNX-like transition then. We are now 3-4 years too late. That is the painful truth… it was a major strategic oversight and we know who is responsible.

Jim, in referring to our current transition recently said: “No other technology company other than Apple has successfully transitioned their platform. It’s almost never done, and it’s way harder than you realize. This transition is where tech companies go to die.”

To avoid this death, perhaps it is time to seriously consider a new, fresh thinking, experienced CEO. There is no shame in no longer being a CEO. Mike, you could focus on innovation. Jim, you could focus on our carriers/customers… They are our lifeblood.

8) Democratise. Engage and interact with your employees — please!

Reach out to all employees asking them on how we can make RIM better. Encourage input from ground-level teams—without repercussions—to seek out honest feedback and really absorb it.

Lastly, we’re all reading the news and many are extremely nervous, especially when we see people get fired. We need an injection of confidence: share your strategy and ask us for support. The headhunters have already started circling and we are at risk of losing our best people.

Now would be a great time to internally re-brand and re-energize the workplace. For example, rename the company to just “BlackBerry” to signify our new focus on one QNX product line. We should also address issues surrounding making RIM an enjoyable workplace. Some of our offices feel like Soviet-era government workplaces.

The timing is perfect to seriously evaluate at our position and make these major changes. We can do it!

This guy just said what we were all thinking. I’ve been thinking this for years. I love my blackberry, I want RIM to succeed.

Scoobydoobydoo

When I think of RIM I think:DarkSeriousClosedOverpricedCorporateSlow
When I think of Apple I think:BrightFunInteractiveAiryCommunityAgile
When I think of Android I think:InnovativeFunEngagingOpenCommunityModular
RIM has a huge branding / identity problem, they do not understand their market.RIM innovation is driven by what insiders want, not what consumers want.RIM is slow, confused, poorly managed, terrible at innovation, just doesn’t get it.RIM has one chance and that chance is to fire the CEO’s and ENTIRE executive team, fire all senior management and EVERY LAST PERSON in MARKETING. Their marketing is absolutely dreadful.RIM needs to become BRIGHT, FUN, INTERACTIVE, AGILE, OPEN and COMMUNITY focused.People don’t buy products and services, they buy what other “cool” people buy.

C3vsThWorld

on another note I’ve never been an apple fanatic…only praise i’ve sung for them was they’er superior computers. Which I’m pretty sure no one can attest are among the best if not the best in the industry. But on to my point…after watching the youtube video(and i actually watched the whole thing!) of Steve Jobs at the 1997 WWDC. I now have a new found respect for him and Apple as a whole…almost everything he said in that keynote has come to fruition and in turn those decision are what has made apple the juggernaut it is today. I especially liked how if he didnt agree he didnt give in. he talked about apps as if he knew the future of computing would be applications and not jus the OS. Which in is probably why the major thing that makes the iPhone and iOS so desirable and successful is the Apps. Because at its bones iOS is nothing extravagant or earth shattering, the only reason the iPhone was so anticipated was because of the iPOD that debuted years earlier! THAT was Apples golden egg and led to the successe of the iPhone, because it was a iPOD that could make calls. HAD apple not introduced the App Store and had the iPOD and iTunes integration, i highly doubt the iPhone would have continue to fly off the shelves after its first generation. Now i believe, if done right and allowed to be license to other manufactures(cus HP make sucky hardware), WebOS could be the next OS to set the benchmark(im thinking of buying stock, but i do hate HP). I had hoped RIM would purchase Palm when it was up for acquisition(Blackberry has great hardware, but horrible aged software). But i see it focusing the mobile market back on the innovation and simplicity of the OS and not jus how well apps work on a device, which it seems like it will be able to do also. But we will see. Im anticipating a WebOS SAMSUNG device :)

Perry

Who cares

loyalBB

my dad was once an loyal patron to the BB name but recently even he as decided that they are good at what they do but as everyone else progesses, they should as well. it will be a sad day when my father rocks an iphone or droid on his hip holster…but i fear its coming all too soon!

The Visionary

RIM missed the ball and missed the ball terribly when it came to mobile technology. The problem is, RIM saw it self as a phone distributor and not a computer company like Apple, Microsoft and Google. They thought if they kept the same business strategy, the “Computer phones” won’t be enough to saturate the market like their devices do. The Game has switched from “who has the better voice and data” to “who has the better software experience and apps”. How do you explain people sticking with a carrier that doesn’t have good telephony services but an awesome phone? Now RIM gets the picture!!!!!

http://www.facebook.com/adrian.russellfalla Adrian Russell-Falla

the WWDC closing keynote address by Steve Jobs – who was *not* the CEO at the time – is absolutely relevant for where RIM is at.

the co-CEOs at RIM damn well ought to sit and watch it through, and internalize what the author of this open letter was telling them.

I doubt they will.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_BRCBJOQK6ISOZTGOX57CGBE3SY AustinS

Borrring! Send this letter over to The Angry Drunk for a little creative re-write and it might actually get some results.

TIvi

I have been into gadgets for 15 years but I never learned to like BB. I am geek and when switched to iPhone 3 years ago after using Symbian and trying out BB, Android.
Honestly i think the BB has been the biggest roadblock to acceptance of newer texhnologies
Most CIO don’t even allow iPhone simply because of the BB infrastructure. I hope BB goes down sorry for the folks working for RIM.

Noemail

Could you send this to Garmin as well. Not much really needs to be changed.

Ricksauce

“the end user doesn’t care. We simply have to admit that Apple is nailing
this and it is one of the reasons they have people lining up overnight
at stores around the world, and products sold out for months. These
people aren’t hypnotized zombies, they simply love beautifully designed
products that are user centric and work how they are supposed to work.”

NAILED IT!!!! Listen to this guy, RIM.

I was a cheerleader for Blackberry for most of the last decade. When Verizon got the IPhone 4, with a tear in my eye and a @#$%-eating-grin on my face, I jumped ship. You lost me. You could get me back, but your product is a nerdy toy compared to my IPhone. The Storm was a joke btw. I tried. ugh.

Redharmony1

This is child-rearing 101 for God’s sake… If my kids are afraid to come to me with ANY problem…it’s not THEIR fault…it’s MINE. I have obviously made them feel afraid and unsafe and that is MY FAILING not theirs. Anyone with a mortgage, a wife, kids and half of a brain isn’t going to say any of that out loud in a culture that has bread fear instead of safe open communication. Shame on them. If they fail, it sounds like they deserve it.

LimitedBBPhone

I have to agree with the “RIM employee” on the points they made! BlackBerrys were all the rage when getting emails on a phone seemed futuristic. Now a BB seems obsolete. The apps suck and so does the functionality of everything else but the email and text. My next phone from work won’t be a BB if major changes aren’t made.

Bob

I have been taking home office supplies (1) since late April. Sorry but I have to feed my family. I am selling it on ebay if you want to buy the stuff back.

(1) not just paper clips

Edheres

A classic — I saw this at IBM a long time ago. It’s not new in the industry and continues to repeat as hubris replaces humility and the results of luck, monopoly position or temporary market leadership gets credited to senior executive brilliance.

Kip360zd

If you are writing this now, your company is already finished, one or two mistakes maybe but the number of missed or over looked ideas that has been accounted for, sell your stock while you can and find someone else that can use your tallent.

http://twitter.com/MobileThoughtz MobileThoughtz

Having working knowledge of RIM – when I first read this I thought, why would this person jeopardize others in the company by further calling out faults (I know people will say nothing new called out). However, in thinking about it, and it’s really sad to say this, but this would be the only “communications” from a “senior” member of the RIM team to its employee base. Employees are kept in the dark with little direction. Sad

TechInsane

Nice letter but the facts are the facts RIM CEO’s do not care or have a clue what is required. Like Pan Am and like Sega you missed the boat and the one you are in has already been leaking for some time.

yeahRight

agree. i know some smart people working there. they just have a really, really bad management team who has no visions, no sound plans / strategies, and are reactionary.

i think the board of directors is at fault, too. they have done a bad job letting this management team running amok with no clear directions for too long.

Wjw42

RIM…you are just like Motorola circa 2006. You have no shot against Apple or Google. You’re best bet is to jump on Android if you want to survive. Enterprise is not your savior…Apple is eating your marketshare

Anonymous

I do remember the laughing RIM did at Apple’s expense in the 2007-2008 time frame. What Apple has going for it–and it is something that RIM may not care a whole lot about–is the convergence of media, the convergence of lifestyles, and the convergence of devices. No one’s life is JUST work, or JUST leisure. No one’s daily experience is JUST on a phone-like device or on a laptop. Apple has really figured out how things ‘play nice’ and integrate happily. That’s a big deal for anyone…consumer right up to Enterprise.

I don’t see RIM recovering at all, these should be SIMPLE and OBVIOUS fixes, how the hell a company as big as RIM can be run by some of most ignorant and arrogant dumbasses is beyond me. Face the facts everyone else is, your employees are, carries are and cosumers are. Why is this so hard to accept RIM??????

FIX YOUR DAMN PHONES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

User

This RIM employee is working for the wrong company. Instead of trying to get an old ship to change course, he should get into his kayak and row to Apple where his ideas will be appreciated.

Sureshsubu

Planning and Logistics are probably their weakest link. Bad Planning and very high logistics costs – 5 times the market rate.
Why make BlackBerry devices in Mexico and ship to the EU when you have 3 factories producing devices in Hungary?